A Noise Within (ANW) presents a free, staged reading of Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party, directed by Joel Swetow, on Monday, January 9 at 7:00 p.m., performed as part of Words Within, A Noise Within’s ongoing series of free play readings by resident artists.

Meg is planning a birthday party for Stanley, the boarder in the quiet house she shares with her husband. When two strangers arrive, seemingly looking for him, the celebration becomes a nightmare. Dubbed “a comedy of menace”, The Birthday Party is one of Harold Pinter’s best-known and most frequently performed plays.

These readings routinely fill up early – so reservations are suggested. Please RSVP via phone to (626) 356-3100 ext. 1 to reserve your seat for this performance.

Cast includes Rafael Goldstein*, Jeremy Rabb*, William Dennis Hunt*, Deborah Strang*, Erica Soto*, Steve Weingartner*, and Freddy Douglas*. * denotes member of Actor’s Equity

About The Birthday Party

The Birthday Party (1957) is the second full-length play by Harold Pinter. In a rundown seaside boarding house, a little birthday party is turned into a nightmare on the unexpected arrival of two sinister strangers. The play has many Pinteresque elements such as ambiguous identity, confusions of time and place, and dark political symbolism.

The Birthday Party had its world première at the Arts Theatre, in Cambridge, England, on 28 April 1958, where the play was “warmly received” on its pre-London tour, in Oxford and Wolverhampton, where it also met with a “positive reception” as “the most enthralling experience the Grand Theatre has given us in many months.” On 19 May 1958, the production moved to the Lyric Opera House, Hammersmith (now the Lyric Hammersmith) for its London début, where it was a commercial and mostly critical failure, instigating “bewildered hysteria” and closing after only eight performances.

The weekend after it had already closed, Harold Hobson’s belated rave review, “The Screw Turns Again”, appeared in The Sunday Times, rescuing its critical reputation and enabling it to become one of the classics of the modern stage.

Harold Pinter CH CBE (1930 – 2008) was a Nobel Prize-winning English playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party (1957), The Homecoming (1964), and Betrayal (1978), each of which he adapted for the screen. His screenplay adaptations of others’ works include The Servant (1963), The Go-Between (1971), The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981), The Trial (1993), and Sleuth (2007). He also directed or acted in radio, stage, television, and film productions of his own and others’ works.

About the 25th Anniversary Season 2016-2017 – Beyond our Wildest Dreams

The theme of the season Beyond Our Wildest Dreams resonates with all of the plays for the season — this coming spring, ANW presents Shakespeare’s King Lear (February 12- May 6, 2017), Ah, Wilderness! by Eugene O’Neill (March 5-May 20, 2017), and Man of La Mancha by Dale Wasserman, music by Mitch Leigh and lyrics by Joe Darion (March 26-May 21, 2017), which round out their celebratory season. With Lear and Man of La Mancha being performed on the same set, audiences will be able to see both plays performed on the same day in The Great Escape, on two days– Saturday April 22 and Saturday May 6.

About A Noise Within

A Noise Within, celebrating its 25th Anniversary during the 2016-2017 season, was recently named “one of the nation’s premier classical repertory companies” by The Huffington Post, and is a leading regional producer based in Pasadena, CA. ANW’s award-winning resident company practices a rotating repertory model at their state-of-the-art, 283-seat performing space. This venue, established in 2011, has allowed ANW to expand its audience, surpassing its previous box office, subscription, and attendance records each year. In addition to producing world-class performances of classical theatre, the organization runs robust education programs committed to inspiring diverse audiences of all ages. Helmed by Producing Artistic Directors Geoff Elliott and Julia Rodriguez-Elliott, who hold MFAs from San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre, A Noise Within truly delivers Classic Theatre, Modern Magic. www.anoisewithin.org